“Gabriel, the only reason that would happen is if you cannot come to accept reason,” I said. “This is not about Lucy; this is about you and me.”
“This has always been about her,” Gabriel spat at me.
“What?” Lucy said, looking at him. “Are you crazy? This started well before me.” She sounded more annoyed than afraid, as if Gabriel were more of a pest than a threat. “Don’t try to blame me. You’re the one who expelled him for loving that other girl. You’re the one who had this massive grudge against him for some reason. You’re the one who is using me as a reason to continue to attack him.”
“You didn’t tell her?” Gabriel said with a look of surprise on his face. “How could you not tell her that after everything that has happened, and in the face of everything that must happen?”
“Tell me what?” Lucy asked, as she looked back to me.
“It doesn’t matter now,” I said quickly. “Gabriel is only trying to distract us from what’s happening right now.” I turned my focus back to Gabriel. “This has to stop. It cannot go on. We cannot expect our brothers to fight our fight, to injure or destroy each other for something that is yours and mine. This is our fight and it must be we who fight it, not them.”
“Are you suggesting that, instead of a war, we fight this out between the two of us?” Gabriel asked with another surprised look on his face. “Do you really think that I would be willing to do that?”
“The only reason I can see for you refusing it, is if you think that you’ll lose,” I pointed out. “That isn’t the show of strength a leader must have.”
Gabriel looked thoughtful. I could see a stormy rage starting to take a hold of his face, as he realized that I was right. Now that I had mentioned a one to one fight, he couldn’t turn it down without looking weak. Our brothers wouldn’t fight for him if they thought that he was weak.
“I suppose you have left me no choice,” he said after a time. “I’d like to stipulate, though, that this is to the death. No mercy will be shown,” he added, so that he could feel as though he was back in control.
“I agree to those terms,” I said. I knew that neither of us could live with the other still breathing. I knew that the only way this could end was for the end to come to one of us.
“What if you fail, Daniel? What will they do to me?” Lucy asked with eyes wide open in fright.
“You are stronger than you think,” I said. “You will find a way forward. You’ve always managed to before.”
Before she could speak again I pushed her to one side, out of the way, and turned back to Gabriel.
I could see him getting ready to send the first shot, before I had set my feet and even before Lucy was truly out of the way. I ducked as a blinding white light shot in my direction. I found myself on the ground and realized that a sharp pain had invaded my side. I looked up. Gabriel was standing over my body with his silver knife drenched in my blood. “This will be easier than I had thought,” he said with a sneer, as he brought the knife down again.
I rolled out of the way. The damp dew on the grass soaked my skin as I felt the air whip past my face. He’d buried the knife in the ground so even the hilt was half-buried.
In the moment it took him to pull the knife free, I was able to stand up and move away from him. I held out my own hands. I could feel the energy building between them and then I directed my force in Gabriel’s direction. I watched as it moved through the air. I’d felt its power as I’d created it and knew that it would be enough to knock Gabriel flat. It was heading right towards him. I was sure that it was going to hit. I could feel relief washing over my body in anticipation for what I was sure was about to happen.
He ducked. Time stood still. The light shooting towards him went over his head. I could see its next target. I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to make her realize that she needed to move, but time had stopped and that meant that there wasn’t any left. The light struck her in the chest. The force alone sent her flying back and her back smacked against the ancient bricks of the church. The sound of her bones cracking filled the air.
CHAPTER 5
Lucy
I’ve been in this much pain before. It was when Daniel had created me. I hadn’t been able to think during my creation, though. This time, my brain was fully alert. It was screaming at me about things I already knew. I was dying. I was going to die. I could feel the cells in my body shutting down. I could see the way the colors of the world had started to lose their vibrancy as they faded away.
“Lucy,” Daniel’s voice called out through the drumming that filled my ears. “I’m so sorry,” he said, as he took my hand.
I’d always found comfort in feeling Daniel’s touch on my body. In a strange way it had always kept me from dwelling on the truth of what I was. In my death, though, I wasn’t granted that grace. His touch was just a new source of pain. I could feel his thumb running down my arm, pressing against the shattered pieces of my bones.
“I’m dying Daniel,” I said, because I was afraid and because it was real and I needed him to know that. “I’m dying and I don’t think there’s anything that can be done.” I could hear the way my voice was starting to break and the way my words seemed flat, and inhuman.
“Lucy, it’s going to be all right,” he whispered to me. I knew, though, from his tone that he was certain of my fate in the same way that I was. “I’m with you,” he said.
“Daniel, you must stop this now,” I said. I knew that I only had a few moments left to say everything that I needed to. “You and Gabriel must not kill each other. I am gone. This is over. Go home and enjoy being with your brothers. You don’t need me. You have them.”
“Lucy, I can’t just pretend you were never here. I can’t just pretend Gabriel isn’t the reason that you’re no longer with me,” Daniel said and I could see his eyes starting to sparkle with tears.
“You must. I insist that you be happy. I insist that you don’t carry another person’s death on your conscience. I insist that you make things right,” I said, but my voice was growing weaker.
The pain in my body was draining my energy more quickly than I’d expected. The world was already turning into dark shadows around me and I knew that my breaths were starting to count against my last. I closed my eyes and felt the relief of not having to watch the world turning black.
“Lucy, you need to open your eyes. You need to stay awake,” Daniel said to me desperately.
The pain was gone though. My mind had managed to shut itself away from the rest of my body. I was content. I was floating through a nothingness that seemed, as though it might be peaceful after everything that I’d gone through. “I’m sorry Daniel, but I have to go,” I whispered to him, as I felt myself being pulled from the peace by my interaction with the outside world.
“But, I love you,” Daniel said and I could hear his heart breaking.
“I love you too,” I said quickly, but I wasn’t sure whether the words made it through the heavy mist that I was now walking through.
I knew from the odd way that I felt calm that I must be dead. I walked through the mist, because I knew of nothing better to do.
After a time I could hear my footsteps echoing out into the silence around me. It occurred to me that to have footsteps I’d need a body and I looked down to see that I did, in fact, have my body back. I wondered what the purpose of that was. I knew that for people who were destined to go to heaven that they would have a need for their bodies, because heaven was whatever they made out of it, but I knew with certainty that I wouldn’t be heading there.
I noticed that the mist was starting to lift around me. I couldn’t see very far ahead, but being able to see at all was a luxury that I hadn’t had a few seconds before.
I stopped for a moment. My footsteps stopped with me, but the sound of them didn’t. I listened. It sounded like there was somebody else walking through the mist with me. “Is someone out there?” I called out and my voice echoed hollowly through the space. “Can anybody h
ear me?” I called out again, although I was sure that if somebody was out there, then they would have been able to hear the first call.
“Are you Lucy?” A voice called out through the mist.
I turned in the direction that it seemed the voice had come from, but I couldn’t see anybody. “I am Lucy,” I called out to the stranger.
“I’m pleased that we finally get a chance to meet,” the voice said and I found myself turning in a different direction, where the source of the voice now seemed to be.
“I’m not sure I’d consider this a meeting,” I said more to myself than to them. “I mean I can’t even see you.”
“I’m sorry. Let me clear things up a bit for you,” I heard the voice say, before a loud click replaced the sound of conversation.
CHAPTER 6
Daniel
The beauty of summer had left the moment that Lucy had died. Heavy drops of rain were falling from the sky, as though the very balance of creation had been upset by the wrongful death. I stood up against the raindrops and felt my own tears mixing in with them, as they poured down my face. Gabriel was standing out of reach, but he was watching. I could tell from the way that he hesitated to move or speak that he was unsure about what he should do next; unsure whether in fact, he’d pushed me too far and that there would be no “next” for him at all.
“You killed her,” I said to him over the space. My voice was devoid of emotion, which seemed about right since my whole body had been taken over by a numb feeling. “You killed her,” I said again when Gabriel didn’t speak.
“It wasn’t actually me that did it though, was it?” he said, as he tried to weasel out of the responsibility.
“You killed her,” I said again, because it was the only thing that my brain could process. It was the only thing that it would allow me to think about. I could have almost missed the tempest of rage that was building within of me with how loudly my one and only thought was screaming.
“She’s gone now. There isn’t anything we could do about that, but that doesn’t mean that you have to end things this way,” Gabriel tried to reason with me. “We could walk away. We could go home. It’s over.”
“How can you say that?” I asked him as my brain snapped back into its functional state. “How can you say it’s over? You have no idea what you’ve done. You have no idea what love is, and for that I pity you. But this is not over, brother. That is something I can promise you,” I said. My voice sounded even, almost unmoved by what was happening, but Gabriel could tell from my eyes that I could feel every word that I was saying deeply.
“What do you intend to do?” Gabriel asked.
“I intend to hold you to our agreement. A fight. Just us, now.”
“We don’t have to do that any more, though,” he said as he took a step back. “She’s dead now, so we don’t have to fight.”
“The fact that she’s dead,” I said and almost choked on the words as I said them, “is exactly the reason why we must fight. I won’t see you take another breath when she has none left to take herself.”
I stepped forward with my hands pressed together. My rage was feeding the energy between my hands. I wasn’t creating something that would simply knock out my brother. I was creating something that would kill him. I could see the fear in his eyes, as he tried to work out where he should run.
I held my hand out and sent the energy shooting at him, but he dodged it and it tore into a tree instead. The smell of burning wood filled my nose as the tree groaned and then started to fall.
I glanced over at Gabriel and just in time. I ducked as a white steak of light went whirring past my head. It smashed into the church and the bricks started to crumble under its force. I stepped back and put my hands together. I knew that it wouldn’t long until one of us took a hit. I could see the determination in Gabriel’s eyes now that he’d realized that it was kill or be killed.
I sent out a streak of light and it barely missed him. I could see the visibly shaken look on his face, as his clothes smoked at the close encounter. He shot straight back, but I didn’t even have to move. He’d lost his focus with the close hit and his bolt of energy went striking off in the wrong direction from the get-go.
“Lucifer, please stop this,” Gabriel begged. He knew that he’d lost. He knew that there was no way that he could win against me. I had been hurt too deeply; my cause was much greater than his.
“What makes you think that I’d stop?” I asked him. “Was it not you who said that there should be no mercy shown?”
“Lucifer, I was wrong,” Gabriel said. “I’m sorry about Lucy, but I can’t change that now. We are brothers, Lucifer. You cannot let it end this way.”
“What would you do?” I asked him seriously. “Would you have shown me mercy? Did you show Lucy mercy?”
“I did not do that to Lucy,” Gabriel said quietly. “I did not aim at her. She was caught in the crossfire. that cannot be anybody’s fault.”
I could feel the cold splatter of rain hitting the back of my neck. It was running down the space between my shirt and my skin in icy little trails. “You would show me no mercy,” I said with certainty. “Should this be the other way around, you would show me no mercy.”
“Then perhaps you are better than I?” Gabriel said as he did not try to disagree. “Perhaps the love you speak so highly of will stop you from making the same mistakes that I always have and always will.”
“Perhaps I am,” I said with a small nod. He was right. I had to lead by example. I had to show all of my brothers that we could be united again.
“Perhaps, that’s why you’ll always lose,” Gabriel said the moment that he could see that I’d been distracted. He lifted up his hand and shot out the last of the energy he had been storing.
I didn’t have time to move out of the way. I knew that it was going to hit me and all I could do was hope that it wasn’t enough to kill me. I pushed out my hand, so that it was facing the exhausted Gabriel and sent out the last of my energy, before I was struck by his force and sent crashing down to my knees.
CHAPTER 7
Lucy
I looked all around, but I couldn’t see the person who had been talking to me. “I still can’t see you,” I said into the empty space.
“I’m here. You don’t have to worry about that,” the voice said and this time it was all around me.
“Where are you?” I asked. “Why can’t I see you?”
“Because you don’t need to see me,” the voice explained. “Some people do, but you have enough faith to hear me without having to see me at all.”
“Are you Daniel’s father?” I asked. I felt stupid for asking. I was sure that it couldn’t possibly be Daniel’s father, but there was a strange feeling in the air. A feeling that everything was right, even though I knew everything was wrong. I remembered what Daniel had told me, how he had described the feeling of being in his his home and being around his father.
“By Daniel, do you mean Lucifer?” The voice asked me.
“Yes,” I said simply.
“I am Lucifer’s father, although I’m unsure whether father would really be the right word to use. I created him. I created all living things.”
“Why am I here?” I asked, because that was the question that felt the most pressing. I wanted to know that Daniel was okay. I wanted to know that he’d walked away from the fight and that he was living happily with his brothers, but my own death seemed more important somehow.
“I thought it was best that we spoke. It seems that your life has been tangled with the affairs of my angels for far too long and for that I’m sorry,” the voice said with a tone full of empathy.
“What do you mean far too long?” I asked, because it reminded me of what Gabriel had said at the church about me being the start of everything.
“Lucy, this is not your first life,” the voice said. “When Lucifer was expelled from heaven it was because he had fallen in love with the very first version of you. At the time I’d taken a step
back from my angels to see how they would manage without my authority leading and guiding them. I would never have guessed that they would expel Lucifer for falling in love with you and that they would kill you for loving an angel.”
“Are you trying to tell me that the girl Lucifer fell in love with was me?” I asked in disbelief.
“She was a version of you, yes,” the voice said thoughtfully. “When I saw what my angels did to you I thought it was only fair that you got another try. I thought that perhaps, in that way, you would be able to live out your life as all my other creations had been left to do. But every time you were born you drew the angels to you. I think they could sense your old soul and they ensured that you never reached Lucifer. Every time an angel touched your life, you were reset. You were given another try; until Lucifer worked out how to bring you directly back to him.”
“What does this mean?” I asked the voice.
“I don’t know what it means. It’s something that I’ve been trying to understand for many years. It seems as though your life has always been destined to be touched by angels. If I weren’t to know any better, then I might suggest that you and Lucifer are tied together in the tapestry of creation. But who I am to guess?”
“You’re the creator of everything,” I said a little dryly.
“Oh, yes,” the voice said cheerfully. “I suppose I am.”
“So, why am I here?” I asked, to bring our conversation back to my original question. I felt a little odd trying to guide a chat with the creator of everything, but he (she? they?) didn't seem to mind.
“I want to give you a choice,” the voice said as the cheerfulness dropped and seriousness took over its tone.
“What kind of choice?”
“As I told you, you have been touched by angels in all of your lives. I haven’t been able to prevent this, until now. My offer to you, Lucy, is that I will give you one last life. If you want it, I will grant you a new birth, well away from my angels where you will be safe to live out your days in the human way that I had always meant for you.”
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